The stunning turquoise waters at a Cornwall beach revered by tourists and locals alike turned brown yesterday - as children enjoyed a last splash of the half-term holidays. A surfer captured the images off the popular Trevaunance Cove, St Agnes, Cornwall, initially fearing it was sewage.
The usually stunning waters turned brown as the flow poured into the cove. The person filming, who wishes to remain anonymous, pans the video around to show the scale of the problem, which runs hundreds of feet out into the sea.
They said: "Sadly the events in the video are on the increase, happening more often with less rainfall, rather than reducing. As a regular water user I can testify to this. It did improve in the late 90's/early 2000s after pressure from organisations such Surfers Against Sewage.
"But it has been on the increase again over the last five to ten years. Sadly, this is becoming an increasingly common occurrence, not just here, but all around the country's coastline and rivers."
While it was initially suspected to be raw sewage pouring into the sea, Truro and Falmouth MP Cherilyn Mackrory told CornwallLive today that after a meeting with DEFRA, she had discovered that the brown liquid was actually run-off from the fields on top of the cliffs following heavy rain. She said: "I am glad it was not sewage, but any pollution/spills in our sea is unacceptable. I will continue to discuss this incident with South West Water, the Environment Agency and Government ministers."
A South West Water spokesperson told CornwallLive: “While the storm overflow at St Agnes triggered briefly on Sunday (October 30) following heavy rain, this was a short duration spill and is unlikely to have caused the level of discolouration shown in the video. On this occasion, we believe there were other factors which contributed to the discolouration, such as mud in the water dislodged by the heavy rain flowing into the area from a nearby stream and runoff from agricultural land.
"We continue to increase investment in the region’s infrastructure as part of our ongoing commitment to protecting and enhancing the natural environment.
“This year the South West has seen the dramatic changes in weather patterns presented by climate change, as demonstrated in August when the region was declared in Drought. Through these changes we are now experiencing more extreme weather patterns than ever before and this year the South West saw one of the driest and hottest years on record.
“As well as prolonged periods of extremely hot weather, we have seen heavy localised rainfall which hasn’t been able to permeate into the dry ground, meaning significant volumes run into our network, which can cause our storm overflows to trigger.”
